Problem of money resources

Unemployment is something the Soviet people have not experienced since 1930. Young people know the word
unemployment only from history books.
Thousands of new Soviet industrial enterprises are being opened every year all over the Soviet Union. New cities spring
up around new industrial developments in Siberia, the Far East and Central Asia.
The problem the country faces is not one of unemployment. On the contrary, it is one of finding new money resources all
along the line.
The newspaper Economic Gazette discusses the problem of money resources. Every year, according to the article, 2.5
million young people graduate from schools.
As the network of nurseries and service establishments grow, more and more women will be able to exchange their
kitchens for jobs. "This will enable us to get several million women to take a hand in social production," the Economic
Gazette estimates.
And what about automation, what about the increased productivity of the worker? Won't this, in the long run, curtail the
number of jobs and bring unemployment?
It is true that in the future fewer hours of work will be needed to produce the national wealth, but instead of depriving
people of their livelihood, this will be an enormous boon to all. It will soon bring the 35 hour week to all workers in the
Soviet Union and after that a still shorter workday with even better pay.
Automated machines will have replaced 6000 men at the Magnitogorsk steel plant by 1965. Altogether, economists
estimate, 100000 workers from metallurgical and machine building industries, and 430000 from light industries will be
replaced by automation and mechanization during this period.
This will not affect full employment. All these workers will be absorbed, either by expansion of their present enterprises
or by similar industries elsew here.
The whole country has switched from an eight to a seven-hour-day, a forty-one-hour week.
In some Soviet industries such as in mining, the work-week is 35 hours.
Later, as a result of increased productivity based, in the main, on automation and mechanization, the work-day will be
shortened further, as conditions permit. All these cuts in the work-week are accomplished without cut in pay, which
really amounts to a raise in hourly wages. In fact, real wages of Soviet workers have been increasing and the Twenty
Year Party Program calls for an average increase of 10 per cent in ten years, with the greatest share of the increase for
those in the lowest wage groups.
A shortened work-day will offer anyone the chance to develop self-expression in art, sports and science.
The whole structure of life under socialism makes life purposeful.
Socialism has abolished insecurity and is steadily raising the purpose in life of every individual.